Leo Wandersleb @LeoWandersleb - 27d
Well, I wish I had your confidence. I figured that Chile isn't qualitatively more secure than Germany when MAD happens. Nuclear clouds from Ukraine suck. I was about as old as my daughter is now when we last had that. Either way I hope we can avoid that timeline.
David @mleku - 27d
plutonium fallout is far less hot particles than an ongoing uranium chain reaction uranium meltdown releases loads of iodine 131 and cesium 137, both have quite short half lives but are incredibly toxic. you can get prophylaxis against the iodine by taking potassium iodide, which helps the kidneys eliminate the 131 faster, but the cesium is longer lasting, several months, and causes cancer (iodine causes the thyroid and several other glands to stop producing necessary hormones that maintain life processes) firstly, it's a lot less material per detonation, versus a whole reactor full of melting fuel rods, secondly, plutonium reaction is nearly instantaneous, and only involves several grams of material, which obviously can't produce literally tons of these radioisotopes it still will raise cancer rates by maybe 20% in a square root of the distance from the dispersion of the plume distorted by the wind velocity - more windy, more distributed, lower per-unit exposure at any given point in the fallout area this isn't as bad as the tritium/deuterium explosive used in nagasaki and hiroshima also, for radioactive exposure, but far less toxic than an uncontained uranium chain reaction
